Panelists

Ward Pennebaker, co-founder, Pennebaker | Fifth Ring

Ward is a frequent lecturer on branding, litigation support and marketing strategy. He serves on the executive committee of the board of directors of the Houston Grand Opera and the advisory boards of Houston Center for Photography, Musiqa, Opera in the Heights and the University of Houston Human Resources Development.
    From the Pennebaker interview by Anique Gonzalez at Marketing Crossing: He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in social psychology and a specialization in learning and persuasion. During his last semester at Harvard, he took a graphic design class and got a job as a silk screener after he moved to Louisiana, where his soon-to-be wife was attending law school. From there, he transitioned his way through various companies and went from silk screener to production manager, art director, and, eventually, designer at Exxon, where he stayed for five years until founding his own marketing firm in 1984. Pennebaker Design was one of the leaders of the desktop movement. "We were the first company to do desktop animation in 1990, desktop editing, interactive multimedia, training, etc., and it was all because our clients were saying, 'I have this problem.' And we would look at it in terms of 'What will motivate people to act? What are the best tools for that?'"

Nuria Castellanos, Instructional Designer, Weatherford International

From the Fall 2009 issue of UH Human Development and Consumer Sciences Outlook:
A native of Belize, Nuria Castellanos completed her first master’s degree in Public Sector Management and was hired by the government of Belize in the Ministry of the Public Service as a training officer. This role allowed her to manage training functions and organize, coordinate and develop internal training programs. After five years with the Belize government, Nuria moved on to the University of Belize where she taught management courses at the undergraduate level. She moved to the United States in the spring of 2007 to pursue a second graduate degree, a master of science in Human Resource Development at the University of Houston. She worked as a graduate assistant with Dr. Consuelo Waight and was involved in numerous research activities, including collaborating with the Cullen College of Engineering faculty to conduct qualitative analysis of interviews held with female engineering students to identify barriers to pursuing careers in engineering. Nuria is currently an Instructional Designer with Weatherford International, where she is responsible for designing and developing technical training for various petroleum service product lines.

Donna Howell, co-founder, Third Coast Theater

When the founder of Cleo’s comedy club moved to New York City, Dave DePew and Donna Howell formed Third Coast Comedy, Inc. After a public improv show, an HR professional with a large oil company approached Third Coast Comedy about participating in their leadership and coaching programs. What landed, and has kept, the job for Third Coast was their corporate backgrounds. They have made a niche in the corporate training world with their twist on improv and role-play acting. They also own their own theatre where they promote original shows and improv a la "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" Third Coast also prides itself in being family-oriented, offering productions that are fun for young children, grandmothers, and everyone in between! The theatre also serves as a great venue for other performers’ productions, parties, and corporate events. Dave and Donna Howell-DePew have taken over 40 years of corporate experience and combined it with performing arts skills to provide a unique learning experience for any organization.

Peter Bishop, Associate Professor of Future Studies, University of Houston

Dr. Bishop specializes in techniques for long term forecasting and planning. He delivers keynote addresses and conducts seminars on the future for business, government and not-for-profit organizations. He also facilitates groups in developing scenarios, visions and strategic plans for the future. Dr. Bishop's clients include IBM, the NASA Johnson Space Center, Nestle USA, the Texas Department of Transportation, Tetra Pak, the Shell Pipeline Corporation, the Defense and Central Intelligence Agencies, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Waitt Family Foundation, the California Environmental Protection Agency, and the Center for Houston's Future. Dr. Bishop is also a founding board member of the new Association of Professional Futurists, and he is President of his own firm, Strategic Foresight and Development, which offers education and training in futures thinking and techniques to the corporate market.

Jonathon Glus, CEO of Houston Arts Alliance

Alan Lumsden, Director of Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center

Co-founder of the Pumps & Pipes Conference, which unites experts in vascular medicine, petroleum engineering, and imaging to study technologies that may be transferred and to spark ideas for solving similar problems.

Lumsden, who is also chair of the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery at The Methodist Hospital, has research interests in restenosis and developing newer methods of minimally invasive therapy. He has received more than $6 million in support for his research from the National Institutes of Health. His work has resulted in more than 200 scientific articles, abstracts, books, book chapters and more than 100 presentations.

Mauro Ferrari, CEO of The Methodist Hospital Research Institute

Appointed as the President and CEO of TMHRI in August 2010 and awarded the Ernest Cockrell Jr. Distinguished Endowed Chair, Dr. Ferrari also serves as President of The Alliance for NanoHealth. Dr. Ferrari was trained in mathematics, engineering, and medicine and is an internationally recognized expert in nanomedicine and biomedical nanotechnology. He led the development of the National Cancer Institute's program in Nanotechnology, which remains the largest program in NanoMedicine in the world.

Tim McLaughlin, Professor and chair Dept of Visualization, Texas A&M

Associate Professor and Department Head, Department of Visualization, College of Architecture, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas

Prior to joining the faculty at Texas A&M University, Tim worked in the visual effects and animation industries for thirteen years. At Industrial Light & Magic, a division of Lucasfilm Ltd. in San Francisco, California, he led teams of artists and research scientists developing processes and producing groundbreaking award winning visual effects for films. His credit list includes 15 theatrically released feature film projects including ‘Star Wars: Episode I’, ‘War of the Worlds’, ‘Van Helsing’ and ‘Mars Attacks!’. One of his last projects at ILM was supervising a performance capture test used by James Cameron to demonstrate the viability of ‘Avatar’ as a motion picture. The work of Tim’s technical artists contributed directly to Science & Technology Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences being given to teams of ILM researchers in 1998 and 2001. These awards represent the highest film industry recognition for technical excellence.